esrosedotblog

IT IS ALL MY FAULT

Believe it or not, if you care, Cracker Jack is getting a makeover

Cracker Jacked

When I was a kid (look out, nostalgia incoming), it was one of my favorite treats.

Candied caramel popcorn and peanuts in a slim box, unique shape, and a "toy" inside.

The toys were crappy little plastic things like cars or soldiers or a paper pinwheel to put on your pencil or something cheap. But it was real.

No more. It is out. There will be a code on the side that you can stick your phone reader on and it will take you to some fucking game.

So what happened.

First of all, I was hurt to find that the brand was now owned by Frito-Lay, the snack conglomerate. Not a good sign.

Then I see that some genius sees the CrackerJack™ as an extendable brand. They have invented line extension favorites.

And they have also redesigned the box. The new packaging bears no resemblance to the iconic Cracker Jack™ look.

The traditional box, which they say they will keep, stands alone.

The kid with a sailor suit who has stood guard over the product for so long is on the bags in a kind of sick shadow of his former self.

And so on.

In another context, I call this "looting".

I have to admit that a lot of this is probably my fault. I used to lust after Cracker Jack™ and ate a lot of it in my time. Then I quit. I am loyal to the brand only in my head.

But I can still taste the product.

What can we expect?

No one sings "take me out to the ballgame" anymore, I suppose, and so the free plug the product got all those years is not there anymore either.

Now, looked at objectively, the little fairy on the box and the baseball sign was probably not doing much for the world of "share of market killer shelf space" marketing.

I used to encounter the Frito-Lay vendor rep shelf filler when I shopped in the morning. We would talk. Since I switched from Staters to Ralphs for my groceries it is a different guy who I don't know. So there is no way that I can comment about such things to someone in the chain of command.

A week or two ago, I introduced myself to the vendor rep guy who was stocking up on our boxes of Snyders Pretzels. I complained to him about the preponderance of broken pieces. (The come all the way from Pennsylvania).

He looked at me as though I was insane. A being kind smile on his face. When I told him I wanted him to pass the word up the chain of command to the president, I realized that I probably was insane.

There will be no repeat of this quixotic behavior about Cracker Jack™. It is just one of those things that have hit their Darwinian moment. The rudimentary new wings or fins or whatever are sprouting. Nothing to do.

I have always wanted to leave the world in a better place than I found it but it is getting harder to do when some of the really good things are evolving out.

This is a 60s commercial starring Jack Gilford, another all time favorite.

Labels: nostalgia